Termite apocalypse, locust rebellion and other cases when insects got out of control.
Gypsy moth invasion
Massachusetts, USA
In 1869, in the American town of Medford, Massachusetts, amateur entomotologist Etienne Trouvelot worked on a disease-resistant silkworm hybrid and missed a pair of butterflies. Further events developed in full accordance with the canons of the genre. The butterflies not only survived, but also multiplied monstrously in the wild.
After 20 years, their numbers have exceeded all conceivable limits. After devastating forests in a 360-square-mile radius around Medford, the caterpillars rushed towards the city gardens. However, this resource dried up quickly. In search of food, millions of larvae entered homes. You can imagine the horror of the townspeople finding parasites in their beds, food, clothes and bathrooms. Sidewalks and houses were covered with a continuous layer of maggots, emitting a pernicious smell.
Life in the city stopped. Each of its inhabitants was involved in the fight against silkworms. The caterpillars were watered with kerosene and burned, shoving them into huge pits. A few weeks later, the enemy was defeated, but not broken. Until now, the gypsy moth is the main pest of deciduous trees in the eastern United States.
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Locust rebellion
Kansas, USA
The locust infestation in North America will surprise no one, but the events of 1874 horrified even seasoned entomologists. On a July morning, Kansas was covered with a gigantic swarm of hungry Melanoplus spretus (also known as the Rocky Mountain locust).
A few days later, Kansas was unrecognizable. Not a single patch of greenery remained in the entire state. Gluttonous grasshoppers ate everything, including sheep's wool, horse harnesses, paint on carts and fences. One Kansas resident recalled: “I was wearing a white dress with green stripes. Before I could do anything, the grasshoppers ate all the green stripes!"
The fires did not save: the locusts extinguished the flame simply with their mass. Farmers began to invent homemade pest control products. It was the heyday of agricultural engineering at home. For example, one of the inventions worked on the principle of a vacuum cleaner: insects were sucked into a small metal box, where they died. Many farming families supplemented their diet with grasshoppers, claiming that locust fried in oil had a tolerable nutty flavor.
And yet, despite all the efforts, it was an uncontrollable force that doomed the entire state to starvation. The total damage from the pack was $ 200 million. Experts argued that unusually dry springs and summers were responsible for the surge in the mountain locust population this year. Farmers feared that history might repeat itself when the trillions of larvae laid off by the swarm wake up. But the locals were lucky: all the larvae died the following year due to late frosts.
Biblical plague
Saint Pierre, France
In April 1902, the Mont Pele volcano, located near the city of Saint-Pierre on the island of Martinique, began to wake up after a long sleep. As is usually the case with volcanoes, the awakening was accompanied by tremors, ash and sulfur dioxide emissions. Fleeing from the excruciating heat, giant centipedes, ants and other arthropods poured from the volcano's soil into Saint-Pierre and the surrounding area.
Millions of yellow ants attacked sugarcane plantations, displacing workers. One of the local landowners fled from his own farm, frightened by the huge number of insects. Further more. Thousands of poisonous snakes descended after insects, from which people and pets died. The natives dubbed these terrible events the "biblical plague."
The survivors of the attack of poisonous insects and snakes were finished off by the eruption of the volcano, which happened a week after the attack of insects. Almost the entire population of the city - and this is 28 thousand people - died.
Africanized Bee Attack
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Africanized bees, like the gypsy moth, were born during the experiments of entomologists. In the 1950s, Brazilian scientist Warwick Kerr worked to create a more honeybee species. As a result, the super bees really did a great job of producing honey, but they were very aggressive and defended the hive better than if it were a ninja squad. And again nature laughed at man: somehow the hybrids got out of the laboratory hive.
In 1967, hordes of killer bees attacked houses in the bay of Rio de Janeiro. The rescuers who arrived tried to drive them away with flamethrowers, but to no avail. The swarm turned out to be incredibly mobile, the death of fellow tribesmen did not bother the angry bees, and they continued to attack. The bites killed 150 people and more than two hundred animals.
This was the first, but not the last attack of Africanized bees on humans. In 2013, an American farmer mowed his neighbor's pasture and disturbed a swarm of 40,000 individuals. The man received about 3 thousand bites and died. In total, over the entire history of the existence of killer bees, there are more than two hundred human victims, not counting several thousand victims.
Termite apocalypse
Saint Helena, France
An explanatory note from 1809, penned by the French general Philippe Leclerc, says that the French Antilles were unable to resist the British army due to the fact that ammunition depots were ravaged by termites.
But termites are not fed up with uniform warehouses. In 1840, the Brazilian termites Eutermes tenuis were brought to the capital of Saint Helena, Jamestown, on a small boat with felled masts. Omnipresent and prolific, they set to work immediately. In no time, almost half of the city was destroyed. The buildings eaten away from the inside literally collapsed before our eyes. Historians say it resembled the aftermath of an earthquake. Half of the city had to be rebuilt.
Residents of tropical countries to this day suffer from the destructive activities of heat-loving saboteurs. For example, in 2011 in the Indian city of Lucknow, termites ate 10 million rupees, which were stored in a bank safe.
Tanya Mazmanova